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Mid-range lens versus Top tier lens?


Max Field

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Was scratching my head when it came to articulating why a Zeiss Digiprime retailed for around $20k, and a CP2 retailed for around $5k. Was it simply because the Digiprime had a slightly more specialized application for the market's era? Even then, I notice quite a few people today holding Digiprimes in the regard they'd hold an Ultraprime.

I've used both extensively and they both look fantastic, however I can't really discern where there's a $10k difference with 2 amazing pieces of glass.

What are the practical short comings of a CP2 I'm not seeing?

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most of the CP2 optical designs are much simpler and easier to manufacture than the Digiprime designs as I have understood. There is also much larger demand for CP2 which lowers the price due to mass production of parts.

The CP2 ones don't need to be as high quality optically because they are meant for single large sensors. No prism and back focus compensation and ultimate sharpness needed

Edited by aapo lettinen
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It's much harder to produce a decent image on a 3-chip 2/3" imager than on the 35 mm format. FFD is huge in proportion to typical focal lengths (48 mm vs a moderately wide lens of 10 mm), and you need a rather radical retrofocus design to project an image that far from the last surface. Correcting distortion is a real challenge with retrofocus formulae, and pretty much every aspect of engineering these lenses is harder compared to symmetrical designs - thermal, tolerances, etc. These designs are particularly sensitive to tilt and decentering of elements, which means more time spent tuning them at the factory and more effort at the design/optimization phase to find a formula that allows for looser tolerances. And despite all the difficulties, Digiprimes are among the best performing camera lenses  -  they're virtually diffraction limited and apochromatic. They're expensive to design, expensive to manufacture, probably require quite a lot of manual labor to make - I doubt Zeiss made a big profit selling them. 

Compact primes likely reuse a lot of tooling and share parts with stills lenses that are cheap at least because of volumes. The designs are conservative, tolerances are looser, elements are fewer.

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